Mary Janes Morla and her infinite generosity

By Rodolfo Pérez Pimentel *

She was born in Guayaquil in 1894. Her father, Darío A. Morla Mendoza, called her Mercedes Segunda because she was the second of the three daughters he had in his marriage to Mercedes Flor Saona. Don Darío was a man of large companies and like everyone in his family was a distinguished worker.

Mercedes and her sisters had a childhood full of happiness and happiness. There were various little animals on the farm. To form the character of his daughters, Don Darío instilled in them “Modesty in their public and private treatment, daily contraction to some useful occupation, that they will not spend much on makeup, shocking with those who have the gifts of virtue, superior to those fictitious beauties.”

In 1909 he traveled with his family to Paris; They lived in a luxurious building on the avenue Champs-Élysées and bought a holiday mansion facing the sea in Biarritz, at that time the most important seaside resort in France.

Mercedes was a Creole with a cinnamon complexion and plump, without being obese or anything like that. It couldn’t have been called beautiful, but the ensemble was acceptable. He was elegantly dressed and possessed a natural and simple dignity. She was good to everyone, especially the needy, the helpless, the Lord’s animals, whom she fed in the streets and in the parks. Whenever a poor man came to his house he used to say: “The Lord is coming to see me.”

During a summer season, María Piedad Castillo visited them and they had very nice moments. Fruit of them is an obituary that he dedicated to Mercedes: “Your black hair is a cloud / stormy in the sky of your forehead; / Your dark and serene pupils, / have the innocence of a cherub / and the dark mystery of a fountain, / formed with the cry of my sorrows ”.

In the prime of twenty-three years, love knocked on her door and she had a chaste infatuation with Gonzalo Zaldumbide Gómez de la Torre.

Solidarity devotion

The 1930s served to deepen his spiritual life. He entered the Association of Children of Mary of the Claretian Fathers, visiting temples, nursing homes, hospitals, the Anteneil orphanage. He went to jail on Thursdays to help prisoners and also to the Maison de Santé, which was a famous charity hospital in Paris. In the asylum for the blind they recognized her by the sound of her footsteps and even made her a street of honor because they loved her very much.

After spending the hardships of World War II in France, at the end of 52 he embarked in Antwerp bound for Guayaquil. His mother had just passed away. Bishop César Antonio Mosquera had told her that she was urgently needed here and she could not shy away from such a claim. She was fifty-seven years old, still young and in the fullness of her faculties, ready for community service with the Claretian Order.

Parents Ángel María Canals and Fructuoso Pérez soon arrived. The first would become famous in the La Chala citadel and for having founded the parish and the neighborhood of Cristo del Consuelo, the church of the same name, and established the traditional Holy Week procession. Mercedes had promised them during their stay in Rome to cover food and other minor expenses for five years and kept her promise until much later.

With them he tirelessly visited the suburb; first by canoe, then by bridges and tarabitas with the danger of slipping and having an accident because he was no longer young, but his faith was getting bigger. To the poor he brought food, voices of encouragement and hope. He also went to jail and leprosy. Many priests and nuns visited her for help. When it came to asking, some were insatiable, demanding that she give everything, simply because she was, because she was silent and smiled, that was how simple and generous it was.

In 1976 I treated her in the new premises of the French Alliance that we had acquired on the corner of Calle Hurtado. She was very punctual in all the acts. Always the first to arrive. And when I asked her about her beautiful jewels Art Nouveau what he was wearing, he explained to me that they had been gifted by his father, That he put them in his memory and as he saw that they interested me, since goldsmithing was more valuable than gemstones, he promised that he would change them every time so that I would know them all and in fact he did.

And he was selling them, like the rest of his belongings to give the money to those who approached his apartment with repeated pleas. In this asking, many abused, because they did not have charity with her.

Sew for the needy

Another of her works of charity was what she called “my little seamstress”, because twice a week she met with several friends her age and they sewed clothes to distribute them free of charge among the poor and if, by chance, the conversation touched personal topics of others, prudently withdrew with some pretext and returned a few minutes when he calculated that the gossip was over. This was his personal delicacy.

On the night of June 26, 1984, after having a frugal dinner as was customary, he entered his room, but soon after he shouted for help to his maid Genoveva, old lady like her, because she felt bad. He still had the strength to call a doctor and his cousin Teresita Plato de Morla, whom he warned not to delay long; then he sat on a chair with the help of Genoveva, he showed some pain, but warned him “It’s nothing, nothing, it will pass” and with a groan he passed away without agony. He did not even have the ten sucres that a taxi to the hospital would have cost him, his generosity had reached so much, since he had given everything to the Church and the poor, expecting nothing in return.

The funeral was the following day in the Chapel of the Society for the Charity of Ladies and was paid for by her cousin.

She was a modern woman, without useless complications from rituals or bland beateries. It was not from chest blows but from pocket blows, which are the most urgent and necessary, especially in cities like Guayaquil, where everything had to be done in those years and which grew at the cost of sacrifice and misery in the suburbs. (I)

* Winner of the Eugenio Espejo National Prize in the literary activities category (2005).